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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Foot-over-bridge, Foot in Mouth

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation constructed, with much fanfare, seven foot-over-bridges - skywalks to non-Hyderabadis - aiming to hep pedestrians cross busy roads. But now, with the Hyderabad Metro Rail Project, five of these will have to be demolished. The other two are hardly used anyway.

The reason for this waste of Rs. 7 crore of public money is lack of coordination, so say the GHMC Officials. The transport department simply sanctioned the FOBs, while the Metro Rail Project group laid out its plans for the rails, not realising that one was demolishing the other. Well, that's all well and good, but who's going to take blame for this squandering? Not the GHMC: they claim that the FOBs were started by the erstwhile MCH.

So with no one to take any blame for the fiasco, and crores washed down in the GHMC's public toilets, the common man will have to bear all. Nothing new there!

All I can say is that the Metro Rail better be one of the best in the world: only then can we call it पैसा वसूल!